ต้นฉบับสัมภาษณ์ Bae Yong Joon เกี่ยวกับการรับบทบาท Kang Jae ho

This is the translation of interview with BYJ on June 07, 1999.WJS club sent BYJ the questions and he sent his answers per e-mail.

Interview with Bae Yong-jun

Q1.The character Jaeho appears to be somewhat opportunistic from certain perspective, but one cannot help finding him charming. What do you think is the appeal of the character Jaeho?

As you know already, in the drama, Jaeho's mother abandoned him because life became so difficult after his father died earlier. Therefore, for his career and success, Jaeho develops a distorted ambition that the highest goal of life is 'money'.However, he shows a 'human wandering' when he realizes through a true love that money is not everything. And exactly that aspect, that innocent and sometimes extremely weak human nature seems to be Jaeho's appeal. Another aspect is his fragile sensitivity about feeling love.He decides to hate his mother who abandoned him, but in much deeper longing than his hate, he looks for a woman like his mother that can caress his wound. That woman is Shinhyung. And in Shinhyung, he discovers 'love' of mother's bosom. Because he reflects us wandering in search of that 'love', he might appear even more beautiful.

Q2. Among WJS maniacs, because of their devotion to this drama, many people got "WJS addiction" that makes them to feel melancholy about everything these days and become unable to believe in love. Don't you perhaps have such symptoms as well?

On the contrary, I am feeling clearly again the existence of fundamental love that is the light of the world. Kang Jaeho is enclosed within the difficulties of life and looks upon the world only in pretence. But as Jaeho starts to feel through Shinhyung the existence of 'love' that has only been placed deep in his heart, the color of the world, which Jaeho was making, changes.Therefore, Jaeho suffers through spiritual wandering and pain and because of it, Shinhyung gets another wound but she endures it willingly. It seems that these aspects of Jaeho and Shinhyung are touching deeply the hearts of the viewers.WJS evokes tears from the viewers but provides hope at the same time.This drama presents the fact that people go through wandering and conflict much because of the various aspects of love and how they can heal their wounds.'Love', which is the origin of the world: I believe I became addicted to that love.

Q3. You decided for this drama after a long time. What were your feelings when you were asked for the role and what is the background of accepting it?

Above all, I liked the role of Kang Jaeho. The character that believes vain desire as the truth of life and lives in lies and hypocrisy, but becomes rescued by grabbing the faint rope called love. The character that contains the words 'devilishness' and 'innocence' entangled together in a complex manner.The roles that I played so far were characters that are always on the side of righteousness, intellectual and composed such as a scholastic model student, a film director, or a part-time lecturer and a best seller author in one. Many times, I could not get rid of the thought that it is Bae Yong Jun acting when I was watching myself playing those roles.However, this time, I had confidence that I could stand before the viewers not as Bae Yong Jun but as a living 'Kang Jaeho'.Getting out of the image of neat and smart young noble that was shown so far, and playing the character, which is an incarnation of desire but undergoes conflict for love, could be seen by the viewers as a changed Bae Yong Jun. That's why I chose WJS.

Q4. Although this drams falls back in the audience rating, it is evoking an explosive reaction from the netizens. As a main character, what do you think are the reasons?

I think WJS is a drama with many interesting stories. It is not a drama that just wants to be watched but a drama that urges the viewers to feel and think and talk about it. Frankly speaking, it is a drama with more to 'think about' than just to 'watch'. Probably that's why a group that can be called 'maniacs', which pours out their continuous love regardless the general popularity, could be established.

Besides, when people mean maniacs, they mean small number of members. In contrast, WJS is getting love from so many people. Isn't cyber space such as PC communication and web the place where opinions of such maniacs can be revealed fastest and gathered together? When I look around the boards at Internet, there are so many opinions that dig so deep into the drama that they even make me to say automatically "how frightening".

As such opinions are gathered on the web site, people seem to recognize the rule that WJS maniacs = netizens.

WJS is really a special drama and is receiving 'a very special love' that could never be seen in any other drama.

It seems like just yesterday when I started the filming while rubbing my cold hands and stamping my feet. And already the second half of the drama is beginning.

Until the day the sweltering heat of high summer starts, until the moment when the drama ends, I hope WJS would radiate more light with the extraordinariness made together by the producer, the performers and WJS maniacs.

Did you raelly love? Story :

This story is about three people, Jae-Ho, Shih-Yung and Suk-Ho. Jae-ho and his sister Jae-Young are abandoned by their mother to escape poverty. Because of this, Jae-Ho doesn't understand what love is. And so, he has a dream of becoming rich, thinking that there is no such thing as love, only money. He works hard his whole life while supporting himself and his sister through college. He works at a seafood wholesale market selling crabs to vendors. He lives with his aunt who has taken him and his sister in after their mother abandoned them.With his big dreams and ambitions, he pretends to be rich while in school, in order to gain the attention of Suk-Ho, who is a from a very rich family. Thus, he tries to get her to like him so he can marry into her family and become rich. But during this process, he falls in love with his Psychology teacher, Shih-Yung. He battles with his feelings and his ambitions, and ultimately picks love over money. Even though they go through hardship, he realizes that he couldn't survive without both, and so he gives up on Shih-Yung for money and wishes her happiness. He only does this because everything seems to go wrong while he is with Shih-Yung. He loses his job, all his money, and his aunt's house gets seized. He thinks that if he has money, none of this would have ever happened. Through all the stress, he finds out that he has brain cancer and expresses his desire to die.